


We Can Have Forever

by Arej



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Accidental Proposal, Established Relationship, I might have given myself a cavity just thinking about this, Idiots in Love, Kisses, Liberal use of Italics, M/M, Other, but mostly they're just Soft, some low level anxiety all around, they're not really male but it's m/m since i used male pronouns throughout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 01:29:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21007460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arej/pseuds/Arej
Summary: Crowley has been holding out his hand, metaphorically speaking, since the Garden, and Aziraphale is ready to take it - to have and to hold it, for all that entails. Only, he wants to do itright.Mother nature has other ideas.Or, Aziraphale gets caught indulging a fantasy, and gets the best possible response.





	We Can Have Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Title once again from Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever" - for a song with not a lot of lyrics, I'm apparently going to wring as much use out of it as humanly possible.

There is a storm raging outside, all howling wind and lashing rain and the shrieking promise of dropped temperatures. It rattles at the windows, raindrops like drumbeats on the glass, with just the right-wrong cadence to drag Aziraphale from his novel. It sounds rather like Armageddon has decided to come round for a second try, and he suspects it is only because the bookshop knows better than to dare leak that none of the storm has slithered its way inside.

No, all bookshop-related slithering is reserved for the demon asleep at his side with his face mashed into the pillow.

Another shuddering squall agitates at the window, and the percussive rain doubles in intensity. Aziraphale stretches just enough to settle his book on the side table without dislodging Crowley (who has tucked as much of his length as possible into the space where Aziraphale’s leg meets the mattress, and coiled the rest around his shins), and turns his attention to the demon, instead.

He’s not used to this, not yet; that he gets to see Crowley like this, _have_ him like this, warm and pliant and sleep-soft at his side, is a treasure he hopes he’ll never be used to, never take for granted. Six thousand years of friendship have led, finally, to six months of - well, being together isn’t quite right, is it? They’ve been together over six millennia, in a variety of ways, and such studied vagueness is behind them now. Six months of - no, that’s vulgar, even if it’s apropos. Six months of dating, then, and every day is somehow better than the one before. Take now, for instance - they settled into bed around eleven and it’s just gone two, and Crowley has hardly moved but to curl closer into the plush warmth of the angel’s side. Most days one would be forgiven for assuming Crowley incapable of sitting still; always lounging, stretching, jiggling a knee or gesturing with a hand or carrying his speech with the whole upper half of his body and some of the lower, besides. But here, now, under the soft glow of the reading lamp and even softer cocoon of the duvet, Crowley is finally, finally at peace.

His heart melts to see it.

Aziraphale threads his fingers through the scattered strands of Crowley’s hair, gathering silken fire between his fingertips. This is, he has not yet admitted1, one of his new favorite pastimes: luxuriating in the feel of that shining, carmine hair in his hands. He’d wanted to touch it all the way back at the Garden, curl his fingers around that river of red, plunge his fingers into the titian waterfall and never let go.

Things might have turned out rather different if he’d indulged that particular whim. They’d have gotten here faster, at least.

Instead he denied himself, not just the once but hundreds, thousands of times over the centuries, through every beguiling style (and a few questionable ones, besides). The gently covered tresses at Golgotha; the delicate curls in Rome; the flowing locks in the Globe; even those atrocious rolls at the Bastille - oh, how he’d wanted to pull them apart with his fingers, undo all that careful setting. And none of that was considering the more modern looks - the last eleven years alone had been a monumental struggle, with the short waves and the Nanny coif and this, now, this short but spiky spectacle, and he almost adored this one the most, but that was probably because he’d finally gotten his hands in it.

He strokes his hand through the spill of crimson, and Crowley’s head pushes into his palm, rather like a cat’s.

He’s about to do it again - the way Crowley unconsciously seeks more is making his whole chest flutter, as if someone let loose an entire flock of doves in there - when Crowley (there’s no other word for it) snuggles deeper into Aziraphale’s side and sighs contentedly. The demon’s left hand relinquishes its death-grip on the edge of his pajama top and slides up to rest on his chest, right over his heart.

Aziraphale covers that hand with both of his own, temporarily abandoning his hair obsession, and runs his fingertips lightly along Crowley’s skin. He’s always been fascinated with these hands, too - long, slender fingers, dexterous and delicate. Rather good hands for magic, he suspects, both proper and stage, although he dare not utter that last aloud. Good for other things, too - for gardening, fingers plunging into the soil and scattering dirt; for music, dancing over keys and strings; for holding wine bottles and glasses and tumblers from loose fingertips; for holding hands; for holding his heart; for holding their future; for holding, for holding, for holding.

Crowley has been holding out his hand, metaphorically speaking, since…well. Since the Garden. Extending the first fingers of communication, the open palm of friendship. Aziraphale traces those fingers now, the barest brush of skin to skin, and thinks about years, about centuries, about millennia with that hand held out towards him.

About how even when he’d been at his absolute worst (_“I don’t even like you”_) Crowley had left that hand outstretched (_“You do”_) . 

About how after he’d somehow sunk even lower (_“Not any more. It’s over”_), thought that finally, finally, that reaching hand had retracted, Crowley had thrust it forward with renewed fervor, taken the blame (_“Whatever I said. I didn’t mean it. Work with me, I’m apologizing here. Yes. Good. Get in the car”_), as if the disaster at the bandstand was somehow his fault. Absolved Aziraphale of any possible wrongdoing. _Begged_ him to take that hand, still outstretched, still reaching, always reaching…

About how, by anyone’s measure, things should have been broken beyond repair. _“I forgive you”_ \- how had he been so cruel? How had those words crossed his lips without shredding his mouth to ribbons, the way they cut into Crowley like glass? Crowley hadn’t _needed_ forgiveness, not for anything; there was nothing to forgive, no trespass to amend. Just a heart, held out in a hand, shaking and desperate and scared, and an angel too stubborn to take it.

No, _Aziraphale_ needed forgiveness. And he’d gotten it.

Crowley, surrounded by the liquid ghosts of his misery, in the pub - _“I lost my best friend”_ and _“Wherever you are, I’ll come to you”_ and that metaphorical hand, reaching, offering, always offering. Not a sliver of hesitation, not a breath of recrimination, not a single, solitary second of reproach. Just an outstretched hand and a broken open heart.2

Aziraphale realizes he’s been obsessively tracing his fingers over Crowley’s, stills his hand with a monumental effort. 

He looks down, over to where Crowley has tucked his face against Aziraphale’s hip, and feels his heart flutter.

It’s more literal than metaphorical, now - a hand held out for Aziraphale to slip his own into during a stroll through the park; interlaced fingers in the evening on their way up to bed; a palm cupped against his face in their softest, sweetest moments. One hand carding through the angel’s hair while he reads and Crowley scrolls endlessly on his phone. Fingers tucked into his waistcoat pockets, tugging him into a kiss. The gentle circling of fingers around a wrist, pulling them close, hands folding around hands and sliding along shoulders and hips while they sway to quiet melodies…

He picks up Crowley’s hand in both of his and brings it up just enough to press a soft kiss to each fingertip. His heart is a fluttering, many-winged thing, trapped in his cage of a chest; it’s a wonder the thumping can’t be heard outside himself.

This hand - these hands, although Crowley’s right is buried somewhere under the pillow his face has abandoned, out of sight - are his, now, to hold. He’s reached out, finally, taken them; folded his fingers into those open palms and those slender fingers around his heart, and found both held with such tenderness Aziraphale practically aches with it. 

The ring on his pinky glints with the light as he settles Crowley’s hand back on his chest, and the fluttering in his chest picks up the pace.

Aziraphale glances from their hands to Crowley’s face - the edges of it he can see still soft with deep, contented sleep - and back to their hands again. To his ring, just barely shining in the low reading light. To Crowley’s slender, bare fingers. Back to his ring.

Carefully, cautiously, he tugs the ring from his pinky, studies it for a moment. It’s winged and golden and the last lingering bit of Heaven he’s cared to keep; a holdover from the earliest of early days, before days existed. It’s been with him always, from the first moment of his existence. He doesn’t know what it’s for, but he’s pretty sure God Herself gave it to him.3

He slips it onto Crowley’s ring finger with a trembling hand.

He’s imagined this moment a million times or more since the Blitz, since he could no longer deny his own feelings, his own desires, his own overwhelming love - imagined sliding a ring onto Crowley’s finger, receiving one in return. Imagined it a thousand different ways - with laughter, or tears, or laughter _and_ tears; hands trembling or steady as stone; just the two of them or a crowd of onlookers; in the close comfort of his bookshop, the simple surroundings of the local Register Office, under the soaring heights of a cathedral.4 Imagined hundreds of different rings, although - there’s a special place in his heart, for this. For Crowley wearing _his_ ring, his (probably) God-given ring, a symbol of all-encompassing celestial love5 repurposed into a symbol of very exclusive, very specific, very _human_ love.

Aziraphale stares at the ring on Crowley’s hand, the way the gold band sits loosely on that pale finger, and is absolutely overcome.

He wants this. Oh, he _wants_ this, wants so desperately the fluttering in his chest has gone positively percussive -

Thunder cracks so hard the windows rattle, and Aziraphale startles.

He’d forgotten about the storm. Aziraphale gives the windows a considering look and they obligingly stop rattling, although the wind howls even more intently afterward as if complaining about the stalwart glass. 

Crowley shifts beside him, cuddling closer, invisible right hand sliding close enough to tuck fingers between Aziraphale’s back and the pillows, left hand curling into the placket of the angel’s tartan pajama top - wait -

Aziraphale reaches for Crowley’s hand, but too late - the demon has a death grip, now, four fingers tucked in and thumb resting on a button. The warm gold of Aziraphale’s ring glints happily between the demon’s hand and his shirt.6

Oh. Oh no. He can’t - if Crowley _sees_ -

It’s not that he doesn’t want this; he does, so very, very much. But he wants to do it _right_. Crowley has been holding out his hand now for millennia, holding out his heart in big and small and cosmic (“_We can run away, together. Alpha Centauri_”) ways, and he deserves to be _asked_, and asked properly, Aziraphale on one knee and his own hand held out in a long overdue reciprocal offering. Not, admittedly, that Crowley would let him get to one knee or - if miracles abounded and he managed it before the demon got wise - stay there very long. He can barely abide Aziraphale doing things _for_ him; a proper proposal would be right out. 

(Oh, but he’s imagined it - candles and music and flowers, so many flowers, a veritable Eden, and all the words that press against his ribcage flowing like honey from his lips, the sparkle of a night sky filled with the stars his beloved once crafted with these, his own two hands, and sliding his ring on that slim finger…)

Aziraphale tugs lightly at Crowley’s wrist, and the demon’s fingers clench tighter on his placket.

He can’t let Crowley wake like this. This isn’t the right timing, this isn’t the right setting, this isn’t the right _way_ \- he deserves more, so much more, everything, and Aziraphale wants to give it to him, wants to make it _perfect_, but he won’t be able to do that if he can’t _get the blasted ring back_…

Except when he slips a hand under Crowley’s, the demon stirs against his hip.

“’Mmmnn, angel?”

Aziraphale swallows past the panic building in his throat. “Yes, dearest?”

“S’mthin’sss wrong?”

“No, not at all. Go back to sleep, Crowley.”

“Hmng.” The demon rubs his thumb against the button of Aziraphale’s top. “Fretting.”

“I’m sorry?” He winces at the way his voice goes high and tight at the end. 

“You’re fretting. Wha’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing, my dear. Just…” Crowley is rousing in earnest, now, concern creasing his sleep-soft face, and Aziraphale frantically casts about for an excuse for the tension that’s singing along every line of his body. “Just worried about the storm.”

Crowley squints up at him. “Sssstorm?”

Rain pelts at the windows in earnest, borne along by a particularly robust gust of wind. Thunder rolls through the sky in punctuation. “The storm, yes.”

Crowley is…not convinced.

There’s an exchange happening, now; for every bit of drowsiness clearing from Crowley’s eyes, the panic in Aziraphale’s chest gets just that much tighter. Soon enough it’s a struggle to breathe, to look normal, to _act_ normal, while Crowley studies his face.

“Never worried about a storm before.” His voice is terrifyingly clear, every syllable crisp and not a trailing sibilant to be found.

“Well, no, not the storm,” Aziraphale prevaricates. He swallows a particularly powerful lump of panic and wonders if it would be a step too far to miracle Crowley back to sleep. (It would.) “The shop, truth be told.”

“The shop.”

It’s not a question, but he answers anyway. “Yes, the shop, I - I do worry that the rain might get in, it sounds - just - positively dreadful out there…”

Crowley’s eyes are a study in suspicion. “The bookshop knows better than to leak, angel. What’s really on your mind?”

Aziraphale worries at his lower lip, realizes that will only make Crowley more suspicious, and pastes on a smile instead. “Nothing, love. I’m - I’m being silly, don’t mind me -”

The smile fractures under the demon’s level gaze. “Aziraphale.”

“It truly is the storm,” he tries, but his voice has gone wobbly at the edges.

“Angel.” Crowley levers himself up to look Aziraphale in the face, to force honesty with close-quarters suspicion. As he does, his left hand unfurls from its death-grip on the placket, pressing against the angel’s chest for leverage; Aziraphale’s eyes flick once, frantic, down to the gold ring happily encircling an unfamiliar finger before immediately wrenching his gaze back to Crowley’s -

Too late.

Crowley is staring at his own hand, splayed there against a tartan-covered chest, mouth just slightly ajar. Aziraphale is suddenly aware that every organ in his earthly body has been turned to lead and had a live current applied to it; he can’t tell if the heaviness or the buzzing is worse. Maybe both.

“Crowley I - I’m - I can explain -” No, he can’t, he _can’t_, this isn’t right, this isn’t how it was supposed to go, but he won’t pretend it was a mistake - “I was just - something I’ve - was thinking about your hands, and - oh - and wondering, and - and I -”

“Yes.”

“I’m so - so sorry, I - wait, what?”

“Yes, angel.”

The buzzing in his bones takes on a warmer, slower pitch when Crowley’s golden gaze fixes on Aziraphale’s blue, when the words - and the smile, oh, Heaven, that _smile_, slow and soft and brighter than a thousand suns - filter through. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

His chest is too tight and wide open and full of buzzing, fluttering things. “You - I - I haven’t done it - done it properly -”

Crowley’s eyes flicker down to the ring on his hand, back to Aziraphale’s face. “Seems pretty proper to me.”

“No, oh, my love, I - it wasn’t supposed to be like this, I was - I wanted.” He searches Crowley’s face and finds only open, genuine happiness. There’s a blush playing at the high points of Crowley’s cheekbones, and Aziraphale wants so very desperately to kiss them, but he settles for cupping them in his palms instead. “I wanted it to be perfect. For you.”

The demon turns to press a kiss into first one palm, then the other, and slides his own hand against the angel’s face. His left is still settled firmly on Aziraphale’s chest as he leans in, close, and brushes their lips together.

“There can be nothing more perfect than waking from one dream to find another has come true,” Crowley murmurs against his lips, and kisses him again, and Aziraphale _melts_.

“That’s - oh, _Crowley_,” he manages, once they’ve pulled apart. They’ve each got the other’s face cradled in both hands now, and it should be ridiculous, but somehow it’s just perfect. “I could study a thousand books, read a million poems, and never manage to speak as sweetly as you.”

“Hnk - angel -” They kiss again, more urgently this time, but still soft and wondering for all that. He can feel the heat of the blush on Crowley’s cheeks, feel the gold band pressed against his face; when they pull apart again, he can feel the ring slipping along the demon’s finger as his hands slide away.

“Oh, my dear, it doesn’t fit,” he frets. Crowley blinks at him for a slow moment and shifts back enough to give his hand a proper stare.

“Fits perfectly. See?” He wriggles those slender fingers, where a content gold ring is snug and secure, courtesy of one demonic miracle.7 “Perfect.”

Aziraphale is staring, now, too. There’s something worrying at the back of his mind, something small but loud, and it must show on his face, because Crowley’s smile slips a bit.

“I know it’s your ring, angel, haven’t been without it in millennia, so of course I’ll return it -”

He moves as if to slide the ring off and finds his hands caught tightly in Aziraphale’s own.8 There is a vulnerability in Crowley’s face that breaks Aziraphale’s heart, and he rushes to fix it, to explain. “No, no, my love - oh, Crowley, I’d be, well. I’d be honored, absolutely thrilled if you wore _my_ ring, dearest, but I know it’s not your style, all fuss and no flash -”

Crowley scoffs at him. “Is that what you’re fretting about now? My _style_?”

Aziraphale worries at his lower lip, thinks on it for a moment, and then concedes. “Yes.”

A quirked eyebrow. “Is that _all_ you’re fretting over?” The eyebrow settles, and caution trickles into those golden glow eyes. “There’s nothing - no second thoughts -”

“Absolutely not.” The answer comes so quickly, with such conviction, that Crowley looks a little rocked by it. Aziraphale tightens the grip of his hands. “Not a single moment. So, yes, that’s all I’m fretting over. I love you exactly as you are, Crowley, and I don’t want to start this next stage of our lives by - by cramping your style or -”

“_You’re_ my style, angel,” Crowley interrupts, heedless of how he is absolutely wrecking Aziraphale, and presses in with a brief, soft kiss. “And anyway, bollocks to style - it’s _yours_, been yours since - since forever, thought I’d never see you without it, and now you _gave_ it - you gave it away -” Crowley’s eyes go suspiciously bright and misty at this - “gave it away _to me_, and I will never, ever take it off.”

Aziraphale, lost for words, squeezes Crowley’s hands so hard they’re both shaking - or maybe they’re shaking anyway, crying, overwhelmed by the moment, by the ruinous softness of Crowley’s declarations, by the tidal wave of love pouring out and crashing between them, by the sheer relief of finally, _finally_ knowing…

Crowley settles down slowly onto Aziraphale’s chest, tucks his damp face into the angel’s neck and tangles their fingers together. Arranges their hands _just so_, enough that he can peek around angelic flesh to stare at the soft gold miracle on his hand. Aziraphale finds himself stroking a thumb where metal meets skin, reveling in the fact that on every pass of his thumb, the ring is _still there_. He’s not imagining anymore. It’s not a dream.

It’s _real_.

They lie like that for a while9, enraptured with this new reality. Aziraphale is perfectly content to stay like this for the rest of the night, into the day, through the whole coming week and beyond, when Crowley asks -

“So you really wanna marry me, angel?”

It’s a soft attempt at Crowley’s usual sass, but underpinned with the tiniest thread of anxiety; the sort of question Crowley asks because he needs to _hear_ the answer, else he’ll spin himself up into a fret. That he even asks at all, that he feels secure enough to ask instead of picking it apart in his own head until he can’t tell truth from anxiety-spawned what-if, is the work of months; Aziraphale is incredibly proud, especially given how difficult this particular question must be. His thumb stills on the ring as he casts about for the right words to set his beloved’s mind at ease.

“Yes, my love, yes, I want it more than anything,” he finally manages, and the words don’t feel big enough to encompass the depth of how desperately he wants this. “I would marry you a hundred times, Crowley, a thousand, if I could.”

Crowley hums in consideration for a moment. “What’s stopping us?”

“I’m sorry?”

“So what’s stopping us, then,” Crowley repeats. He rearranges himself until he can see both their entwined hands and Aziraphale’s face, and his own is graced with a smile that somehow straddles the border between sweet and sly. “Why can’t we?”

“Why - why can’t we what, darling?”

Crowley grins now. “Get married a thousand times.”

Aziraphale stares at him.

“There’d be so much pressure for perfection, if we only did it once,” Crowley offers, and oh, does he know _exactly_ how to tempt his angel. He doesn’t need convincing, but Crowley doesn’t need to know that, not when he looks like this, a radiant smile and the sparkle of a good temptation in his eyes. “But if we did it lots of times - hundreds, thousands of different weddings, we could try everything. All your literary fantasy scenarios; all the different human customs; all the historical events we witnessed; all the themes…”

“People will have questions.”

“Call them vow renewals, then. Have tiny, private weddings just for us between the big spectacle types. Space them out. Oh, a wedding among the stars,” he adds, and Aziraphale hadn’t even _considered_ that before, but the way Crowley’s face and voice have softened with the thought rockets that particular image to the top of the angel’s priority list.

“Alpha Centauri?” He offers, and is rewarded with a brilliant smile.

“You got it, angel. We can do whatever we want. And if you’re offering a thousand weddings -”

“It won’t be enough."

“Hmm?"

He smooths a hand over Crowley’s face. “It won’t be enough. I won’t be able to make up to you the time I wasted, but -” he puts a thumb over the demon’s lips when he starts to protest - “I want to try. So, my dearest, my darling, my love - I suppose a thousand weddings sounds like a good start.”

There is a storm raging outside, all howling wind and lashing rain and the shrieking promise of dropped temperatures. It rattles at the windows, raindrops like drumbeats on the glass, but the cadence can’t drag Aziraphale from this - the soft press of Crowley’s lips, the warmth of his embrace, and the shining, radiant love that glows between them.

**Author's Note:**

> 1To Crowley, at least. There’s no denying it to himself anymore, not when he gets to indulge like this.^
> 
> 2They have discussed it, a bit - as much as Crowley is willing and able to abide, and no more. Aziraphale is cautious of ripping open a wound the demon might prefer to leave covered until it’s closed, and Crowley gets fidgety and difficult when Aziraphale apologizes for anything. It’s a slow process. They’re working on it.^
> 
> 3He’s right.^
> 
> 4He has a hundred ideas for how to get Crowley down an aisle without injury, each more ridiculous than the last, and plans to speak absolutely none of them aloud.^
> 
> 5At least, that’s what he’s taken it to be, and there’s no one to contradict him, so that’s what it has been.^
> 
> 6Cheekily, too; the ring has been fully aware of Aziraphale’s hidden desires for decades and is quite pleased with this turn of events.^
> 
> 7It would have resized itself, but it’s been waiting for this for quite some time now, and wanted the reassuring promise of permanence that came with perfect fit via demonic intervention.^
> 
> 8Which is good, because the ring was going _absolutely nowhere_ and was prepared to put up quite the fight.^
> 
> 9Fifty-three minutes and seventeen seconds.^


End file.
